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Show Heavy Snows in Northwest Limit Production of Lumber i Don't blame the lumberman for rising lumber prices, i Blame the weather. E. G. Gavin, editor of American Builder magazine, says lumber production has been held down by abnormally heavy snnw storms in the Western timber areas and by excessively heavy rains in the South. The resulting shortage of construction con-struction lumber, Gavin adds, has been accentuated by the unprecedented unprece-dented rate at which the building industry has been erecting new homes. Increased lumber prices consequently are inevitable, the editor says. Northwest Produces Half Prices for lumber produced in the Pacific Northwest are considered consid-ered particularly significant because be-cause about half of all lumber used in the United States comes from this section of the country. More than 60 percent of the softwoods soft-woods such as Douglas fir and pine, which are basic construction ' materials, comes from this region. Gavin says that prices recently auoted for Douglas fir have been about 25 percent above the figures prevailing last August. He points out that these are prices being quoted at the mills not retail ' PIBySthe time lumber being pro-' pro-' duced now reaches the consumer, I price increases might not be so great, the editor explains. He i says that there will be a tendency for lumber dealers and builders to absorb some of the rise in order or-der to maintain the fast rate at which new construction is being put in place. Winter Consumption High Because of the severe storms, sawmills in Oregon and Washington, Washing-ton, the two biggest lumbering states, were slowed to a fraction of the usual pace for much of the winter. For six weeks in January and February, lumber camps were frozen in. The American Builder editor points out that consumption was unusually high while production was low. Weather conditions in the East and Midwest were more favorable than in most years. Housing "starts" hit an all-time high of 104,300 in October, 1949. This heavy volume continued with 95,500 in November, 79,000 in December, De-cember, 80,000 in January and another 80,000 in February. Never before in history were there; 160,000 starts in the first two1 months of the year, Gavin says.) |